Health reporter,BBC News

A vaccine patch could cut out the need for painful needles and boost the effectiveness of immunisation against diseases like flu, say US researchers.

The patch has hundreds of microscopic needles which dissolve into the skin.

Tests in mice show the technology may even produce a better immune response than a conventional jab.

The patch has hundreds of tiny needles

Writing in Nature Medicine, the team of researchers said the patch could one day enable people to vaccinate themselves.

Each patch, developed by researchers at Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, contains 100 “microneedles” which are just 0.65mm in length.

They are designed to penetrate the outer layers of skin, dissolving on contact.

To test the technology, the researchers loaded the needles with an influenza vaccine.

One group of mice received the influenza vaccine using traditional hypodermic needles and another group were vaccinated with the patch.

Patches that had no vaccine on them were applied to a third group of mice.

Three months down the line the team found the patch appeared to produce a more effective immune response in mice, then infected with the flu virus, than a standard vaccination.

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A stem cell therapy for osteoarthritis is to be tested on patients in the UK for the first time.

A year-long trial, funded by Arthritis Research UK, will mix stem cells with cartilage cells in the lab and inject them back into damaged knee joints.

The new treatment could be an alternative to joint replacement surgery, experts hope.

Stem cell therapy is a less invasive

treatment than joint replacement

Scientists from Keele University will study up to 70 people from the end of this year.

The trial will be run at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Oswestry, Shropshire as part of a five-year research programme.

Three treatments are being tested in a randomised trial of patients with osteoarthritis of the knee.

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Botox has been approved as a preventive treatment for chronic migraine by UK drug regulators.

It comes after a trial of more than 1,300 patients showed success in reducing the frequency of headaches.

But only patients who suffer headaches for at least 15 days a month, half of which come with migraine symptoms, are eligible, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency said.

Chronic migraines can dramatically

impair quality of life

It is thought around 700,000 people in the UK get chronic migraines.

Migraine charities said many of those would not have been properly diagnosed and that some patients can really struggle to find a treatment that works.

Injections of botox, or botulinum toxin, are more commonly associated with smoothing out wrinkles.

It is not exactly clear why it may work in chronic migraines but it is thought that, as well as being a muscle relaxant, it may work to block pain signals.

In clinical trials, patients were given up to five courses of injections of botox into specific head and neck muscles every 12 weeks.

After 24 weeks, those treated with Botox had fewer days with a migraine than those who received a placebo injection.

By one year, nearly 70% of those treated with Botox had a 50% reduction in the number of migraines compared with before the trial.

The final results were published in Headache in May this year.

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A new study suggests there may be more likely dangers lurking in the bathroom.

Scientists in the US used an ultra sensitive method to detect bacteria in shower-heads in bathrooms across the country.

Results showed that around 30 per cent of shower-heads had “significant amounts” of Mycobacterium avium, a bacterium linked to breathing illnesses that most often infects people in poor health but can also cause illness in healthy individuals.

These bacteria are often found in water. However, in shower-heads the bacteria tend to clump together to form a slimy “biofilm”, at a concentration more than 100 times greater than is found in ordinary water.

Professor Norman Pace, who led the study, said: “If you are getting a face full of water when you first turn your shower on, that means you are probably getting a particularly high load of Mycobacterium avium, which may not be too healthy.”

These results may also provide an explanation for the rise in Mycobacterium avium infections in recent years, coinciding with people preferring showers over baths.

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for National Geographic News

Published June 16, 2010

Networks of brain cells in a petri dish can be trained to keep time like hourglasses, a new study says.

The discovery may help scientists reveal how our brains track time, an ability fundamental to how humans interact with each other and the world. It’s also key to how we recognize speech patterns and song rhythms.cn

(See “Making Music Boosts Brain’s Language Skills.”)

“One issue that’s been long debated regarding timing is whether there’s a central clock in the brain or whether timing is a general ability in many different circuits of the brain,” said study leader Dean Buonomano, a neuroscientist at University of California, Los Angeles.

Brain’s Electric Memories

Buonomano and colleagues kept networks of rat brain cells alive in petri dishes and stimulated them with two electrical pulses separated by intervals ranging from a twentieth of a second to a half-second in length.

(Related: “Rat Made Supersmart — Similar Boost Unsafe in Humans?”)

After the cell networks received two hours of “training,” a single electrical pulse was given to them to see how the cells would react.

In networks trained with short intervals, the communication between cells lasted for only a short while—say, 50 to 100 milliseconds in networks trained on 50-millisecond intervals.

However, in networks trained with long intervals, network activity lasted for much longer, according to the study, published June 13 in Nature Neuroscience.

When networks trained on half-second intervals were probed, the networks essentially talked to each other for 500 to 600 milliseconds.

The research is the first time scientists have found that brain cells can learn to generate simple timed intervals.

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Drinking several cups of tea or coffee a day appears to protect against heart disease, a 13-year-long study from the Netherlands has found.

It adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting health benefits from the most popular hot drinks.

Those who drank more than six cups of tea a day cut their risk of heart disease by a third, the study of 40,000 people found.

Consuming between two to four coffees a day was also linked to a reduced risk.

While the protective effect ceased with more than four cups of coffee a day, even those who drank this much were no more likely to die of any cause, including stroke and cancer, than those who abstained.

It is still not clear what difference milk

makes to the health benefits.

The Dutch tend to drink coffee with a small amount of milk and black tea without. There have been conflicting reports as to whether milk substantially affects the polyphenols – believed to be the most beneficial substance in tea.

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Men whose love lives are falling short can try a new prescription pill to combat the problem.

The first drug made available in the UK for premature ejaculation, called Priligy, can reportedly triple the amount of time a man can last in bed.

It works by altering levels of serotonin in the brain, which should give men more control over ejaculation.

The pill is only available on the internet following a confidential online consultation with a doctor.

Priligy has been available and licensed for use in several European countries in recent months and is now coming to the UK following clinical tests on 6,000 men.

The treatment is sold in packs of three and costs £76 for a pack of three 30mg tablets.

It’s designed to be taken between one and three hours before sex.

‘Too embarrassed’

Premature ejaculation is thought to be the most common sexual disorder in men, affecting one in three men at some point in their lives.

Research has shown that sufferers avoid relationships and have a lower overall quality of life than men without the problem.

A recent European survey found that British, along with German, men are the most unhappy with their sex lives because of the problem.

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